Just in case you still need help getting in there's brilliant Emergency Rail Map: "The map carries full details of the services and connections available to passengers for the duration of the industrial action", claimed a Network Rail spokesman, who wished to remain anonymous for operational reasons. "You can clearly see from the map that the network can adapt well to the disruption and passengers may not even realise there's a strike on at all."..... Enjoy

"I met you over a year a go, first thing on Sunday morning at Pimlico station - you, Claire, an Austrialian nurse on your way to work, and me off to watch the Cricket World Cup Final. You smiled at me and we started talking after you committed the evil crime of reading the back of my paper. I though you were fun to chat with and if on the tiny chance you are still in the country, single and remember me, it would be great to meet."

Blimey, he got her name, was chatting to her, why not ask her out.......D'OH

"I have only seen you once and I've not been able to stop thinking about you ever since. I saw you on Monday, May 17, at about 6pm on the Nothern Line platform at Bank station heading south. You stood next to me waiting for the train wearing a green skirt and a small top showing your flawless olive skin and were reading the Daily Mail. I have regretted not asking you out ever since."

And one that may possibly work as at least the woman reads Metro:

"You are a tall, gorgeous redhead who gets on at Victoria and off at Warren Street about 7.30 most mornings. Sometimes we make eye contact and I nearly pluck up the courage to speak. You are usually listening to a Walkman and you always have a Metro, so maybe this is my best chance to say I like you. Give me a smile and your phone number."
Tall blonde guy

So if someone sees these two tomorrow morning making eyes at each other over their Metros, pleeeeeeeese report back. I need a good wedding to go to.

Although things between Ken and Bob are at an all time low, The Standard believes it ain't over till it's over: "Hopes that the strike could be called off were raised today after it was revealed there had been telephone contact between London Underground and RMT officials. Union leaders will look for an improved deal, allowing them to suspend the action for further talks........The final decision on the Tube strike could rest with the annual general conference of the RMT, which opens in Portsmouth on Monday."

On the BBC today programme Crowe said: "What the Mayor should be doing is getting his chief executives out of their golf clubs or wherever they are in the afternoon, or cocktail bars, and get them round the table like the chief executive of Network Rail did yesterday afternoon, and sort the differences out between them."

"I am perplexed by an ad in the tube (maybe because I am American). Does anyone know what the Sure ad that says "Argh!!! I've pulled" and features a pair of floral underpants means? I think Sure is a deodarant and I am not sure how it all comes together. Any insight would be greatly appreciated."

I managed to get a picture of the ad yesterday, but I emailed Mike back last week with my understanding of it. I believe it's when, as a chick, you think - brilliant I'm about to pull, but then you remember you're wearing a disgusting pair of large underpants (Renee Zellweger had a moment like that in the film Bridget Jones' Diary with Hugh Grant saying "What an enormous pair of knickers"). I think this would then bring you out in sweat and only Sure's deodarant would do. Really convoluted I know, and as I haven't heard a dicky bird back from Mike I don't think he's that impressed or convinced by my argument.

I spose I'll now get a load of unsavory characters coming to the blog through Google looking for ladies lingerie.

She looked fairly engrossed and I only wished I could have seen whether she was reading a discarded copy (they have a strange magnetic effect on most people) or whether she'd bought it herself.

By the time we got to Earls Court she was still gripped although her and a number of other people started flapping about a pigeon that flew on board for a lunch time snack. D'OH - was all I thought as I hadn't seen a pigeon in the carriage for some time now.

I was amazed at how determined they were to shoo it out and how equally determined it was to come back in. I spose they were worried that it would have got trapped on board and started freaking out in some Alfred Hitchcock stylie way, pecking at glasses and leaving droppings on copies of Heat - although not sure if we'd have noticed the difference. Perhaps there'd be a new column of celebrity birthmarks that look like pigeon shit.

A bunch of designers were given free rein to think of what they would really like to see in London. (One of them was clearly on some drugs as they tried to make my old stomping ground "unglamorous Feltham" into "London's coolest area" - this would not just take some designers but every god that exists in the world and the universe and then it probably wouldn't work.)

I quite like the idea of an overground system though. Some Dutch architects came up with this who may well have been on some recreational drugs. Check out The Evening Standard for the full story.

And typically or topically, when I got home this evening commenting stalwart and regular visitor Bradley, sent me a fantastic link from Metcheck which shows how hot it is on various lines on the tube. Basically it was bloody hot on all lines today.

Bradley also sent a link to a transport forum where he came across the original link and apparently someone had tried to cool down the Tube today in their own special way:

"Some idiot tried to cool down the Jubilee today by wedging a newspaper in between the doors. Of course this just resulted in a 10 minute stop in the tunnel, whilst the driver had to find out what the problem was."

Inventive but rather stupid.

At least Sheriff Ken is too busy trying to get re-elected this year rather than trying to re-instate campaign and �100,000 reward for some genius who can work out how to air condition the Tube.

Update - Quality post from Rob at The Big Smoker on some vox pop stuff from The Standard with people waxing lyrically (stupidly) about how hot it was on public transport.

Ken - I don't know I buy an annual season ticketNorris - Between �25 and �30, I think but I get a zone 1-3 annual pass myselfHughes - �15.40 (how can you so precisely give the wrong answer)
Johnson - I'm not sure - I always get an annual one. Maybe about �24.

Ken - Tube (yes I have proof of this)
Norris - Bus and Tube. I get the bus to Brixton, then the Victoria Line to Green Park and the number 9 to Kensington High Street (then an essay as to how wonderful his journey is)
Hughes - It varies, sometimes I drive my taxi (errr, what - he has a taxi) or I take the 53 or 453 bus. I used to cycle but my bike was stolen. If I'm elected mayor I will walk to work.Johnson - I take a train from Brockley to City Hall.

It was quite touching to see the happy couple reading and quietly swigging from a bottle of red wine on a Saturday night. Makes a change from sitting opposite people with cans of Diamond White or bottles of Archers, WKD or the latest alchopop.

Perhaps the man was just reading the book as a pose though, as Penguin have launched a FHM meets TLS campaign trying to get blokes to read saying that women prefer men who read books or "Good looking women prefer good booking men" - there's an intriguing "Readers' Wives" section with tales of people who met their partner through their love of contemporary fiction - or Penguins. Cheers to Ian whose blog I spotted this bizarre campaign on. You can also win a grand if a half dressed woman from Penguin "our stunning Good Booking Girl" spots you reading one of their recommended books of the month.

I don't normally drink cider and ended up ordering it by accident tonight and then sticking to it, as it was oddly refreshing until I realised that the only food I had eaten today was a bag of crisps and three satsumas ......hmmm healthy!

Fortunately one of my drinking companions (the newly hot ex colleague of mine who had lost over three stone since I last saw him) had not eaten anything at all today, so I didn't feel quite as bad.

Also on the tube I managed to vicariously read the woman opposite me's copy of Hello!/Now!/OK!/Then!/Whatever! and learnt about celebrity cat fights. The only time I ever read these gossip magazines is over someone's shoulder on the Tube or in my hairdressers. The celebrity cat fights were ex Big Brother contestants Jade and Kate (yawn), EastEnders Kat Slater and Dirty Den, Jamie Cullum and Kerry McFadden (WHAAAAAAAAAAT? WHY? It's another world) Posh Beckham and someone else (who cares?) and most weirdly Natasha and Britney (as I know my pop stars, I knew this was Natasha "I'm Singuuuuuuuullllll" Bedingfield (Daniel Bedingfield's younger sister - it's a British thing - these pop siblings are not worth troubling yourself over) and La Spearster.

After the copy of OK! (as it turned out to be) was left behind, a man too old and too suited to know better grabbed it and proceeded to read more of the celebrity cat fights and fortunately he left it behind too, so I grabbed it and rescued it from its Tube travels and will be finding out this weekend why the female Bedingfield and Britney are at loggerheads.

It looked like a huge laugh and Andrew has posted some great pictures of the event on his site where the picture below came from:

The last time I saw pictures like this were from a massive party on the tube - The Circle Line Party last year.

Anyway, I asked Andrew for some more information about The Others' gig and he put me on to the Let's Kill The Others Forum and I found out that it was a "normal" gig with crowd surfing, free condoms, booze, crowds, cameras and bootleg recordings which the pictures show (well they don't show the free condoms, but you'll get the general drift). Check out the video on the NME's website.

The best thing about one of the threads on the forum though was a particularly surreal idea about making it a regular occurance and how the Tube might have to change if it was:

"Me and my good friend Mister Toms very much enjoyed the gig on the tube. So today me and Mr Toms had a conversation about the tube and all the crazy things that could happen on it, and Mr Toms came up with this idea:

Themed Months on the tube.

So you could have a Star Wars month were all the tube workers dress up as storm troopers. And the repair men could dress up as rebels. Then say the metropolitan line is down.. instead of saying "The Metropolitan Line is down due to engineering works" it would be "The Engineering line is under assault from rebel forces", said over the tube speaker system in Darth Vader's voice.

And announcements could be made on the tube such as "We are now entering hyper speed". Only it would come on as the tube is inexplicably grinding to a halt (as it always does). And that would really piss people off.

Oh what fun.

And you'd have to change your money from pounds to some weird space currency to use the tubes.

With such genius ideas surely me and Mr Toms should be in control of the whole system. What do you think?"

Perhaps Mr Toms and Plastic Long Breath should take over the Tube. Sounds a lot more fun than the current system.

But not all doom and gloom, I saw a limbo dancing pigeon yesterday in the waiting room at Glamoursmith. I was sitting staring into space after coming back from King's Cross on the new wooden seats - thinking - ah, another day off work and suddenly a pigeon was inside - pecking on the floor. No one else had been in the room since me, so I wondered how the little blighter had managed to materialise from nowhere. After he'd finished snacking I saw him duck under the little gap beneath the waiting door.

I also received a pretty rude email in bold letters from a tube driver who has his own IRC chat room asking me to add a link to his site as I have "duff" ones on my main site apparently (the two at the top for Eurorail and Railpass - both seem to be working fine to me). How positively would you reply to an email that started:

AnnieDo you respond to e mail these days? This is a repeat I'm sending.

Let's just hope that he's not sitting round the table for the negotiations about the forthcoming strike.

Finally, a nice email from Donal:

At Baker Street today I heard one of the regular announcements reminding pre-pay OysterCard Lovers to touch their card on the reader at "the beginning and end of your Tube or DLR journey". The person in the announcement I heard unfortunately ran their words together somewhat so it came out as "the beginning and end of your Tube ordeal or journey"...

Don't know whether this recording is limited to Baker Street. I may be going mad or hearing things - would love some corroboration.

Donal - maybe you are going mad. But I don't think too many people would be unduly surprised to hear their journey described as an ordeal.